A Ghostly Night in Sunshine Hospital

What’s happening? I’m supposed to be dying; dead, actually. Time for me to leave. Hey-ey-ey, why are all of you running around? Leave me alone; who’s this banging on my chest now? Stop sticking all those wires on my skin, it tickles. Don’t shout. What’s cardiac-pulmonary resuscitation anyway? I can see what you all are upto, you don’t know I’m here. What are you poking into my elbow, now? Ouch, it still hurts, don’t you understand, I haven’t quite cleared the border yet. Ow, another injection, another shock. Get away.

Lemme go!! You’re dragging me back into my body. Ah, time’s not right, eh? Never mind, a bit of ‘life’ again is welcome. I was looking forward to my well-earned ‘freedom’, but the fear of the unknown lurks in every ghost’s mind, I guess. Ok, back to being Mr. Y.Z. Rao for a little longer…

Now what’s happening? Who’s this…stop shoving, this is my body, I have every right to enter it again. You can’t get into Y.Z. Rao. I’m his spirit, he’s mine. Who’re you? What d’you mean you’re the one of the Virar-Fast regulars? Give you an inch and you’ll take the entire footboard? No, never needed to board one of those local trains in Bombay….tough one, this ghost, just pushed me aside and entered my body, what-the-hell. Says he’s going to be there until he feels like getting off again. Goonda ! Where do I go now?
****
It’s strange to be a spirit. I seem to see everything in the hospital at once: the corridors, the operating room, the Casualty, the stores, the laundry. There’s no sense of time, so what I’m seeing could have happened or is yet to be.

The infant that was brought in for its inoculation has stopped wailing: its parents are being assured that they have no reason to cry.

Another parent snorts at a receptionist in the typical Indian sentence-less echo: “Vaccine. Vaccine.” The receptionist must be new, for her answer is: “Waxing? Not here, this is not a beauty-parlour.”

At a counter, a girl tells a customer that the SunShine Hospital website is on the first floor. When reprimanded, she confesses that she thought it was something to do with ‘sight’, and had hence guided them to the ophthalmology department.

At the nurses’ station, Sister Apsara is barking at everyone thus: “Take your pelvis, ma’am, and put it in this envelope.”

“You don’t worry, I’ll do your urine for you, just give it to me.” “Unless you are seducted, it’s not possible to do your MRI test.” “Yes, doctor, the patient is in shock, can’t even apprehend his own name.”

“The lab reports don’t lie, if the test is positive, you are pregnant, sir.”

“Where’s your blood?”

“It’s therapist, not the-rapist, please say it correctly.”

There’s the Operation Room: someone’s calling out for the wardboys to help move the patient, “Ishwar! Raam!” And the patient who’s recovering from the anaesthesia, hearing the familiar names of his Gods, yelps: “Main mar toh nahi gaya? Bhagwan ko koi bula raha hai.” The anesthesiologist convinces him that he’s alive.

Under those bright lights, masked persons in green, and shiny instruments on trolleys, slide by. A surgeon grumbles as he readies to enter the skull bone, “this drill-bit is rotating like Mallika Sherawat’s bum.” His assistant growls a warning: “the patient isn’t ‘knocked out’ yet.” As a ghost, I can read the patient’s mind: he wants to see that drill bit.

Near the stairs, one distraught woman asks the liftman whether the lift is going to the sixth floor, then confirms nervously: “In this same building, no?”

In the Men Only outside the Stress Test Room, I see a man vigorously rubbing hair-removing lotion onto his chest, as per the instructions on the label. Half the hair is gone, and he’s run out of the liquid, hence the despair.

Look at that patient waiting for the ultrasonography test: he’s groaning to a technician that his bladder’s FULL, and urges her to hurry, hurry, hurry with the test. “Do you feel the urge really strong?” she questions. “Ye-es,” he almost weeps, doing a jig, crossing his legs. “Wait,” she gestures, “there’s someone inside. Just five minutes, ok?” Ouch!!
*****
Other ghosts sense that I’m a newcomer. One whisks me off to the mortuary, because, it hisses, ‘ it’s a good place to chill out in’. No luck. The mortuary has ‘dance-practice’ going on inside it. Young women and men are clapping and tapping rhythmically.

Apparently, the Annual Day is approaching and pantries and stores are also thus occupied with participants rehearsing their ‘items’. The trouble with Mumbai, grumbles my shadowy companion, is that there’s no place for a ghost to rest in a hospital. No beds available, no benches, not even a cadaver freezer, oooff!!!. He drags me to the cafetaria, where only a few stragglers are sitting. We occupy vacant chairs near two doctors eating lunch.

I overhear: “ Your wife works in Anatomy, right? I need some teeth. Incisors and molars, with roots.” (I balk…it sounds like a hoosh.)

“Doing a project?” He speaks like he hears this request often.

“ Ya, my daughter’s in second year dentistry.”

“I’ll check with Dr. P. He needs two heads for his workshop on advances in cochlear implant surgery. He’ll be digging into the inner ear via the back of the skull, so I guess you can get your teeth.”

“How much?”

“The heads would be paid for by the delegates, so I’ll check if the teeth can be free.”
(How ghastly this talk is. I gasp. This sounds like a reverse hoosh.)
*****

I take a look at my body. He’s conscious and claims he feels like a new person. For heaven’s sake, you aren’t me, you fool, there’s another spirit inside me…I mean you…whatever, that’s my body, and I am not in it. Everybody’s praising God that he’s back….he’s not, it’s that Virar-Fast ghost there, not me, I’m his real ghost.
*****

What is that woman doing there? Yoga ? Aerobics? Oh-oh, that’s bad of me. It’s a loo I’m peering into. She’s trying to collect a stool sample. The contortions are inevitable, for the anatomy causes dis-ease. Ha, ghosthood doesn’t stop me from making puns, though there’s no one to share the grin with. The small plastic container has a tiny spoon and she’s ever-so-carefully scooping up…., you-know-what. The technician outside’s screaming at a patient who’s got an enormous sample of the same thing in…oh-oh, a shoe-box. “Nahin toh kaise leh aata?” he innocently enquires.

I move on. A Maharashtrian lady in the waiting room wants everyone to know she has a cardiac problem: “Mujhe heart hai,” she explains in broken Hindi to no-one in particular, with pride in her audible sigh. Retorts another, matching her moan for moan: “Mujhe bhi…pressure hai…aur die-bitties bhi…maloom? Soogar hai, samjhey!!” The rest of the ‘waiters’ (another pun and, sigh, no one to share with), patients all, look on admirably. Possibly their conditions are as yet unknown, unglamourous maybe.

Another corridor, another incident. One doctor is going through the old reports that a patient is carrying. “Didn’t I tell you, main nein kaha nahi tha, shaadi ka photo le ana?” The perplexed patients pleads his case: he isn’t married. What’s marriage got to do with it, yells the doctor. Someone interferes. It’s an accent problem. The doctor is told there is a difference between shaadi and chaati. Oh dear, life in a hospital can be so chaotic.

I see a rascal outside the gate, convincing someone that he has ‘contacts’ inside, that he can get a ‘discount’ on a heavy bill, that he can knows someone with special ‘powers’ who can cure cancer, even, at a price, of course.

It’s tiring, just hanging around (quite literally) like this. I must go back.
*****

Here, listen you Virar-Fast ghost, get out of my body. I want to rest. No, there’s not a square inch I can sit in here. You can’t live in Y.Z. Rao forever. Get out. What d’you mean ‘occupier keeps, legal-owner weeps’? That’s for the slum-dwellers near Sahar airport, not for us. It’s not the same thing. OUT. Ouch, don’t jostle you others, what are you doing? You guys are helping me? How’s that? Oh, that’ll be one ghost less, eh, in this overcrowded place? Thanks. Yes, I agree, hell’s less crowded than Dadar station. You tell this chap, guys, I’m not letting any other ghost take my place. Hey Virar-Fast you have to get OUT. I won’t stop pushing, this is Mumbai. I want a place to rest… a full body to stretch out in. This is no quarrel, it’s a fight, a battle, a war. You want an easier life, go park yourself in Bihar, you’ll find enough people dying there.
*****

It’s over. I’ve got my own space back. The doctors say, ‘Rao, the worst is over’. The family thanks God. I know better. The hospital was a good place, there was a bed to sleep in, running water, kind words….. I’m not planning to achieve nirvana, not after what I’ve seen. I’m not going to believe any swami or guru now. Too many virtuous, god-men-fearing souls have ‘liberated’ themselves and have crowded the netherworld. It’s simpler to be in a body right here on earth. I wish Y.Z. Rao a long and healthy life, I do.